


Lines of communication

by dancinguniverse



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 04:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8130476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: He’s not expecting Joe’s voice on the line, brassy and right there, not at all like he’s three thousand miles away.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For interstellarity, who wanted to see my take on Webgott.

The naked branches outside David’s desk window have been clawing to get inside all morning, spurred on by the raw December wind. He uses that as his excuse for his lack of concentration. It’s a relief when the phone rings.

He’s not expecting Joe’s voice on the line, brassy and right there, not at all like he’s three thousand miles away.

“That’s because I’m not,” Joe retorts when David murmurs something inane about the connection. “I was in the area, thought I’d ring you up. Unless you’re too busy to meet up with an old buddy.”

“I’m writing,” David says. What he means is, his typewriter is on his desk, and there’s a cold cup of coffee next to it, and he has memorized the number of windows on the house across the street.

“Writing. Jeez. Well, you want to take a break for an hour, get a coffee, or will that throw off your plans for a Pulitzer or something?”

David turns, as if Joe might be lurking outside his front door. “Where are you?”

Joe rattles off an address, somewhere north of the grocer’s, by the street name. “There’s a diner down the street. Harriet’s?”

“I know it,” David admits. “What are you doing there? Here?”

“Look, you want a coffee, or do you want me to run up a phone bill?”

“I’ll meet you in a half-hour,” David says, dazed.

He isn’t sure what to expect when he walks into Harriet’s. In his mind’s eye, he guesses he still pictures Joe in uniform, jacket unbuttoned, M1 slung over his shoulder. It’s hard to fathom him in civilian clothes. The hunch of his shoulders against the wooden booth draws David’s eye before he can be surprised by the rest of him. There’s a creep of hair on his upper lip, and shadows under his eyes. It’s not a good look on him. David remembers the snap of his voice in Hagenau, the haunted, weary look all of them bore.

Joe jerks his chin up in greeting, but makes no move to get up or shake his hand, and David slides warily into the booth across from him.

“You look like hell,” Joe observes, and David scowls immediately.

“You should talk.” He expects Joe to argue the point, but he only shrugs and looks out the window. “Look, not that I’m not glad to see you,” and David doesn’t think to obfuscate the point, “But what are doing on this side of the country? I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“Then what’d you write all those letters for?” Joe asks, which would be reasonable, except—

“You didn’t answer any of them! I thought you must have moved.”

“Should have stopped writing, then,” Joe points out.

David’s glare is interrupted by the waitress coming to take their order. David gets more coffee, to match Joe’s, and they eye each other across the table.

“So what have you been up to?” Joe asks. “Writing? You back in classes and all? Good little college kid hitting the books?”

David blows on his coffee uneasily. He’d gotten back too late to enroll for the fall. He’s supposed to start in the spring. He’s supposed to have been catching up. “I picked up some comic books,” he admits. “It’s a little silly, isn’t it? The ring can do just about anything. Shouldn’t he have some limits?”

“You gotta be kidding me. Are you giving me an actual literary critique of the Green Lantern? He’s a superhero, Web. And he’s got limits.”

They argue hotly over two and then three cups of coffee, and finally David realizes he’s missed dinner. He orders a hot turkey sandwich and, when Joe balks at ordering his own food, a bowl of soup. “It’s awkward if you’re just gonna stare at me while I eat. Just eat the soup, Joe. It’s on me.”

He says this last without thinking. Joe’s the one on travel and visiting him, for whatever reason. David would have picked up the tab regardless. But something about the way Joe’s eyes sharpen makes him hesitate, and he covers by taking an overly large bite of turkey. Joe was always skinny. So what if his wrists are a little narrow, his cheeks thin?

By the time they’ve pushed their plates aside, it’s been dark for hours. They both take care winding thick scarves around their necks, and David pulls on his wool coat, carefully looking away from Joe’s beaten up canvas work jacket. It doesn’t look warm.

Nonetheless, it’s Joe who lingers outside the diner, refusing to meet David’s eyes and let him say goodbye. “I got whiskey back in my room,” he says abruptly, stomping his feet on the freezing pavement. “Have a drink? Pay you back for dinner?”

David sighs, the breath dramatic as it steams out in front of him, taking a long time to clear. “Did you read my letters, Joe?” he asks.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

But Joe’s eyes lock with his, shadowed by the uneven glow of the diner’s lights, and David knows he read at least one of them. The one that mentioned a cellar in Haguenau, a barn loft in Germany, a dozen shadowy corners and stolen hours in sunlit Austria.

David shrugs, and gestures for Joe to lead the way.

The room is cramped, nothing but a single bed and dresser and faded yellow wallpaper, and the whiskey bottle standing half-empty next to a pack of cigarettes and a battered notebook. The bed is unmade.

Joe sweeps the notebook into the top dresser drawer and flips the coverlet over the tangled sheets without apology, and David settles himself warily on the edge of the bed. There’s nowhere else to sit.

The bottle makes a gentle glug when Joe pours a few fingers into a lone glass and hands it to David. He sits next to him on the bed and tips the mouth of the bottle against the rim of David’s glass. “To your health,” he says, and takes a pull directly from the bottle.

David sips his glass more primly. “You ever gonna tell me what you’re doing here in New York?”

“Same thing you’re doing reading comic books, I guess,” Joe says. “Four hours of conversation wasn’t enough for you?”

“You invited me up,” David points out, and Joe takes the glass from his hand and sets it on the floor, along with his bottle. “What are you—“

“Shut the fuck up,” Joe instructs, and grabs him by the back of the neck, hauling him in with a kiss that’s as much teeth as lips. The bed is cramped but nothing they haven’t navigated before, and likewise the thin walls that let them hear every passing guest in the hallway, the pacing creak of the floorboards from the unit overhead.  

David finds their rhythm again more easily than he’d expected, realizes how much he’d been longing for it, for Joe, and makes the mistake of murmuring it against Joe’s throat, rough with a few days’ worth of beard. He expects to be mocked, but Joe just groans and shoves harder against him.

Afterward, David steals his arm back from underneath Joe with a wince of pricking nerves, and sits up, squeezing feeling back into his fingers. He leans down to pick up his abandoned drink. “You sticking around town for long?” he asks.

Joe shrugs, crossing his arms behind his head. “Long enough to make the trip worth it.”

David stands, pawing through the sheets for his socks and laughing in spite of himself when Joe tosses one at his head. “Mind if I come back sometime?”

Another shrug. “Suit yourself.”

David’s shoes landed on opposite sides of the bed, and he slides into them while he pulls his coat back on. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

Joe only waves lazily. When David steps back outside, the cold stings his nose and eyes, but for the first time in months, he feels like he can breathe.


End file.
